On Being and On Being with Violence

Back in 2017, after the election of Donald Trump, and after Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism became a belated bestseller, I was interviewed by Krista Tippett for her podcast, On Being. In the dark days of this January, I went to an event in the Californian Redwoods and spoke again with Krista and Lucas Johnson, the Civil Conversations leader, about Arendt, love, politics, and violence. It was perhaps inevitable that talking about Arendt would invite the war on Gaza into the room, and so it did. You can listen to our conversation here.

To accompany the launch of the podcast, I wrote a short essay on violence which is published alongside a letter from Lucas Johnson which you can read on On Being’s substack here.